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Quiz about Get on the Gravy Train with Cliches
Quiz about Get on the Gravy Train with Cliches

Get on the Gravy Train with Cliches! Quiz


Go like the wind, go bananas, go for broke, go whole hog, go hog wild, go out on a limb, go against the grain, or just go along for the ride, but go and enjoy a quiz about cliches with a key word beginning with the letter "G".

A multiple-choice quiz by alaspooryoric. Estimated time: 5 mins.
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Time
5 mins
Type
Multiple Choice
Quiz #
374,145
Updated
Dec 03 21
# Qns
10
Difficulty
Average
Avg Score
7 / 10
Plays
1068
Awards
Top 35% Quiz
Last 3 plays: PatL81 (4/10), Guest 98 (10/10), maninmidohio (10/10).
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Question 1 of 10
1. Richard had grown quite angry because of recent new policies at work. He began yelling and making irrational comments. He threatened to start throwing components of his computer, stacks of papers, and other items on his desk about the room. He ripped his tie and shirt off, sat down, and began laughing aloud. I cautiously approached him to tell him that, while I understood his frustration, there was no excuse to . . . what? What cliche best finishes what I am saying? Hint


Question 2 of 10
2. If I were to be fired or dismissed from my current job, I, according to the expression, would get something. What would I get? Hint


Question 3 of 10
3. Perhaps, you've been a victim of the "green-eyed monster". Perhaps, you know that this means you've been a victim of jealousy. Perhaps, you even know that the coinage of this expression is credited to William Shakespeare. However, do you perhaps know in which of Shakespeare's plays this exact expression occurs? Hint


Question 4 of 10
4. To "give short shrift" to someone or something is "to give little time and/or consideration" to that subject. Usually, this "shrift" is given with little sympathy or none at all. For example, one might say, "The press was given short shrift by the President following her live statement". What is the origin of the expression "give short shrift"? To what does "shrift" refer? Hint


Question 5 of 10
5. My father and I were standing in a checkout line at a local grocery store when I noticed he had grown sorely annoyed because the lane in which we were waiting was distinctly for customers with ten items or fewer and the individual before us had a cart overflowing with fifty items or more. I could tell my father was annoyed because he remarked, "That really ________________!" What expression below did my father use? Hint


Question 6 of 10
6. According to a very old expression, whose origin is derived from the Bible, what is always redundantly joined with "wormwood" to create an expression used to denote either a bitter medicine or a bitter experience? Hint


Question 7 of 10
7. If someone has taken a circuitous route or continued without any direction, that person is said to have "gone around" whose "barn"? Hint


Question 8 of 10
8. If someone has made an attempt to "gild the lily", what has that person attempted? Hint


Question 9 of 10
9. If you are not gaining anything from what you are doing, then someone might say to you the "game is not worth the" what? Hint


Question 10 of 10
10. What might someone, borrowing a name from an old story, call another who is so excessively moral or well-behaved as to be irritating? Hint



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Most Recent Scores
Mar 19 2024 : PatL81: 4/10
Mar 14 2024 : Guest 98: 10/10
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Quiz Answer Key and Fun Facts
1. Richard had grown quite angry because of recent new policies at work. He began yelling and making irrational comments. He threatened to start throwing components of his computer, stacks of papers, and other items on his desk about the room. He ripped his tie and shirt off, sat down, and began laughing aloud. I cautiously approached him to tell him that, while I understood his frustration, there was no excuse to . . . what? What cliche best finishes what I am saying?

Answer: Go haywire

"Go haywire", when referring to a machine or apparatus or event or undertaking, means that something has gone wrong, perhaps even in a bizarre manner. However, when using the expression to refer to a person, the speaker means that individual is behaving in an uncontrolled if not unbalanced manner.

In a 1956 book called "Holy Old Mackinaw", Stewart H. Holbrook explains that the expression comes from Maine logging camps, where workers saved the wire from baled hay and used it for repairing things and for makeshift tools.

He writes, "A camp that was notoriously poor in its equipment came to be known as a 'haywire camp'; and from this usage it spread to mean broken, busted, sick, crazy, no-good and a score of other things, none of them praiseworthy".

However, in an earlier 1946 book--"The American Language: Supplement I"--H. L. Mencken explains, "No one who has ever opened a bale of hay with a hatchet, and had the leaping wire whirl about him and its sharp ends poniard him, will ever have any doubt as to how 'to go haywire' originated".
2. If I were to be fired or dismissed from my current job, I, according to the expression, would get something. What would I get?

Answer: the sack

To be fired or dismissed from one's job is to "get the sack" (or "get the bag" in older versions of the expression). Roving workmen carried their tools in a sack or bag, and when the work ended or a workman was dismissed, the worker picked up his sack or was handed his sack by the employer, and he moved on.

Originally, to "get the sack" was not necessarily a negative thing; it just meant that the job was finished and the employer had no more need of the workman. One of the earliest written recordings of the expression occurs in a 1576 publication entitled "Common Conditions".
3. Perhaps, you've been a victim of the "green-eyed monster". Perhaps, you know that this means you've been a victim of jealousy. Perhaps, you even know that the coinage of this expression is credited to William Shakespeare. However, do you perhaps know in which of Shakespeare's plays this exact expression occurs?

Answer: Othello

In 1604's "Othello" the chiefest of Shakespeare's villains--Iago--tries to make Othello doubt the loyalty and love of his own wife Desdemona. Iago drops hints about her sexual relations with Othello's friend and trusted lieutenant, Cassio. He warns Othello of jealousy and thus subtly suggests Othello has something of which to be jealous: "O, beware, my lord, of jealousy; / It is the green-eyed monster, which doth mock / the meat it feeds on . . . ".

Apparently the allusion here is to cats and tigers and other green-eyed animals, which toy with their victims before eating them, just as a jealous lover may both love and hate his or her beloved, particularly if that beloved becomes the source of great stress and anxiety.

Shakespeare had used a variation of this phrase in an earlier play "The Merchant of Venice", which appeared in 1596. The character Portia refers to "green-eyed jealousy".
4. To "give short shrift" to someone or something is "to give little time and/or consideration" to that subject. Usually, this "shrift" is given with little sympathy or none at all. For example, one might say, "The press was given short shrift by the President following her live statement". What is the origin of the expression "give short shrift"? To what does "shrift" refer?

Answer: confession and absolution of sin

"Shrift" is the noun form of the verb "shrive", which is the act of a priest hearing a confession of sin and then offering forgiveness and absolution. The participle form of "shrive" is used in the name of the Christian holiday Shrove Tuesday, the day before Ash Wednesday, the beginning of Lent. Shrove Tuesday is meant to be a day of reflection on one's shortcomings and sinfulness so that one may achieve a more penitent mood as one enters into Lent.

The expression "give shrift" was originally used to refer to a blessing or sacrament bestowed by priests on those condemned to die by execution.

While the opportunity to absolve oneself of wrongdoing seems generous, to give someone only a short amount of time to do this or to rush that person through it seems most unsympathetic or indifferent. Again, William Shakespeare is most likely responsible for the existence of this variation of a cold-hearted offering of shrift.

The earliest written recording of "short shrift" is found in "Richard III". Sir Richard Ratcliff is trying to hurry Lord Hastings, who appears to be delaying his execution with prayers and bemoanings. Ratcliff finally remarks, "Dispatch, my lord; the duke [Richard III] would be at dinner: / Make a short shrift; he longs to see your head".
5. My father and I were standing in a checkout line at a local grocery store when I noticed he had grown sorely annoyed because the lane in which we were waiting was distinctly for customers with ten items or fewer and the individual before us had a cart overflowing with fifty items or more. I could tell my father was annoyed because he remarked, "That really ________________!" What expression below did my father use?

Answer: gets my goat

Something that "gets your goat" annoys you quite severely. This origin of this widely familiar expression is lost, but it probably began to be used in the early twentieth century. In the 1945 publication "American Language", H. L. Mencken claimed that he was told that the saying originated in a practice among certain horse trainers of soothing a nervous horse by putting a goat in its stall. If someone wanting to see that particular horse lose a race came by the horse's stall and took the goat away, the horse would presumably return to its nervousness and not run very well.

The earliest written recording of the expression is in Christy Mathewson's "Pitching in a Pinch", which was printed in 1912: "Then Lobert . . . stopped at third with a mocking smile which would have gotten the late Job's goat".
6. According to a very old expression, whose origin is derived from the Bible, what is always redundantly joined with "wormwood" to create an expression used to denote either a bitter medicine or a bitter experience?

Answer: gall

"Gall" is bile, the bitter secretion of the liver, and "wormwood" is a medicinal plant with a notably bitter flavor. Thus, to say "gall and wormwood" is really to say "bitter and bitter". The expression appears several times in the Old Testament of the Bible, particularly in the books of Jeremiah and Lamentations. Jeremiah 9:15 reads, for example, "Therefore thus saith the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel; Behold, I will feed them, even this people, with wormwood, and give them water of gall to drink" (King James Bible translation).
7. If someone has taken a circuitous route or continued without any direction, that person is said to have "gone around" whose "barn"?

Answer: Robin Hood's

To "go around Robin Hood's barn" is to travel, often unnecessarily, a long or winding route that takes one out of the way of or nowhere near one's destination before finally reaching it. Robin Hood, of course, has represented since the 14th century the free spirit who roamed the forests of Nottingham to rob the rich so that he could give to the poor. Obviously, as an outdoorsman he had no need for a barn, or so goes the logic behind the expression. To go around Robin Hood's barn would take a great deal of effort indeed since he didn't have one in the first place; one would be constantly and pointlessly roaming.

The expression is much more recent than the legend of Robin Hood. It appears to have first turned up in J. F. Kelley's "Humors of Falconbridge" in 1854: "The way some folks have of going around 'Robin Hood's barn' to come at a thing". Given this use of the expression, one can see that it can refer to a figurative journey as well as a literal and physical one.
8. If someone has made an attempt to "gild the lily", what has that person attempted?

Answer: to improve the appearance of something already sufficiently beautiful

To "gild the lily" is to add ornament to that which does not need any because it is already quite beautiful. Therefore, use of the expression can also mean "to make a superfluous gesture" or "to go beyond what is required or necessary". Again, we have William Shakespeare to thank for this cliche, although our current expression is a mangled or contracted version of what Shakespeare actually wrote.

In the play "King John", the title character has seized the English throne and has decided to hold a second coronation, hoping to reinforce his weak position. Lord Salisbury comments on this event: "Therefore, to be possess'd with double pomp, / To guard a title that was rich before, / To gild refined gold, to paint the lily, / To throw a perfume on the violet / . . . / Is wasteful and ridiculous excess".
9. If you are not gaining anything from what you are doing, then someone might say to you the "game is not worth the" what?

Answer: candle

To say the "game is not worth the candle" is to say "whatever you're doing is not repaying the money, time, or effort you're investing". In the days when people played card or dice games by candlelight, they sometimes paid a nonplayer to hold the candle so that the light fell on the cards or the dice rather than in the eyes of the players. Of course, they also had to pay for the candles.

When a player was having a run of bad luck, he might well remark that the game was not worth what he had paid for the candle or what he was paying someone to hold that candle or both.

A 1603 English translation of the "Essays of Montaigne" contained these words: "The horror of a fall doth more hurt me, then the blow. The play is not worth the candle".
10. What might someone, borrowing a name from an old story, call another who is so excessively moral or well-behaved as to be irritating?

Answer: goody two-shoes

The expression comes from the title of a story, "The History of Little Goody Two-Shoes", which was published in 1765. It is thought to have been written by Oliver Goldsmith for John Newbery, the famous publisher of books for children, and the individual for whom the Newbery Medal is named.

The tale is a "Cinderella story" in which the main character is a little orphan girl named Margery Meanwell, who lives in such poverty that she has only one shoe to wear. However, when a rich man feels sorry for her and gives her a brand new pair of shoes, Margery is so overwhelmed with happiness that she goes around exclaiming to everyone she encounters, "Two shoes! Two shoes!" In the end of the story, she marries a rich widower and her earning of wealth at last is a lesson to the children reading the story that being good has its rewards.
Source: Author alaspooryoric

This quiz was reviewed by FunTrivia editor looney_tunes before going online.
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This quiz is part of series Alphabetical Idioms:

In this collection, you will encounter a quiz for each letter of the alphabet A - Z. Each quiz is about idioms, clichés, proverbs, etc. with a key word beginning with the letter focused on by that quiz.

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